@wendyg There's at least one model out there that can only be turned on using a smartphone app. So...yea, I'm betting it spies on the users as well. Fortunately, that's not much of the ebike market.
This. I don't think it's restricted to EVs though. I disabled manufacturers network access, and never link car to phone. Don't know how effective this though.... ☹️😡
I just want a simple analogue electric car… with knobs not screens. If I had the money I’d look at getting a classic car converted but it’s far from affordable 😔
@not_a_label just curious what you consider affordable? I've looked into converting my 1988 Suzuki Samurai to electric, looks like it'll be about $12,000. The car cost me $5000 six years ago, so $17,000 for an electric car seems like a good price.
For comparison to something similar here, the BYD S1 Pro starts at $30,000.
@nabeards @not_a_label Out of interest, where are you getting those numbers from? Here in the UK £10k seems about the minimum for the draw conversion kits themselves, entirely ignoring fitting/equipment/labour costs.
@andygates @not_a_label again, dependent on your needs. I travel usually at 30MPH, fastest is 45mph. I spend a lot of time on dirt roads as well. The safety advances seem to be focused on high speed travel. Of course, everyone’s needs are different. But even a car from 2005 would have better safety than my 1988. And you can buy cars from 2005 for US $5000 still.
I've been a "car phreak" since I was old enough to walk. I own like a dozen cars... half of them are even on the road and drivable.
I used to like all cars. Nowadays, I have zero interest in pretty much anything post ~2010 due to the complexity of trying to maintain it and more and more due to the invasive software and policies in cars newer than around that age.
Some makes and models are better than others. Would I buy a new BMW? LOL, are you serious? Would I buy a new MX-5... Maybe.
On the electric car front it seems like Hyundai/Kia have the best "normal" electric options in my market (Canada). Would I buy one... maybe... if I had to... I'm more inclined to find a good value used car regardless of propulsion I think.
I'd really like something electric as a new (to me) car when the time comes. Not sure I can do it given the software.
If I lived in the UK I'd probably be all over the Renault 5 / Alpine A290 twins as a daily struggle car. In my market we are stuck with the punitive auto industry BS from the south. It may change but ... we'll see. I have no idea what those cars are like from software or policy though. Maybe I'd walk out of the showroom.
Btw, if you are really thinking about getting an electric car, check out Jonny Smith's channel on Youtube (The Late Brake Show). He has done a lot of sensible reviews of electric cars over the years and is UK based.
They sent me a feedback survey the following week, so I took the opportunity to make snarky comments along the lines of "tell your engineers to look up what a 'watchdog timer' is".
And, to be fair, the dashboard display hasn't frozen like that again. It has briefly gone blank and rebooted while driving along, so maybe somebody got the hint...
To get the best from Octopus Intelligent Go, you need to grant access to Octopus to query the car's battery level. I send sat nav destinations to it. It's handy to send pre-heating schedules to it. But you can work around all these from the car itself or doing percentage calculations yourself
I think beyond a certain date they all spy on you. 2012? Don't know. But that would mean any modern all electric vehicle is another computer on wheels sending telemetry back to its producer and associated advertisers. You'll probably need to ID Verify, sorry 'age verify' to use it at some point. Some people try to disable stuff but then cars either won't start or it invalidates insurance. I miss driving and I'd hate to run an old gas gusler, but I'd also hate to have to buy a modern car.
I very much wish I was in a tax bracket where I could afford to have someone do an electric conversion of an older vehicle. Though now I wonder if there are services out there that mod your car to cut it off from the mothership and put it more under your control?
There was an option for a model one up from the EV we bought (MG4), which does have an internet connection. We couldn't justify the extra 10% for the bells and whistles, but now I'm quite happy about that. But all cars are part of surveillance capitalism these days, one suspects.
I got an mg5 a year ago - would definitely recommend. It has a screen for radio and you can connect it to android auto but apart from that it's all physical knobs and buttons and as far as I can tell it's got no internet connection internally.
@mhkohne I feel this is something that any mechanic could do if you asked them. I should ask my mechanic and/or check youtube to see how hard it is. It shouldn't be much harder than disconnecting an antenna from a plug, or cutting the cable, worst case.
I suspect, not that this answers your point, that any new petrol or diesel would likely spy on you to a similar extent. Again, acknowledging the tangential nature of this comment.
@bloor Indeed - was in a petrol rental car last year that wouldn't let me use cruise control not because it lacked the technology, but because it didn't have the right level of subscription set up ...
understood! Just trying to work out where you're coming from.
We have no car and do sometimes think about getting a runaround - but every time we seriously run the numbers, summing the insurance and either lease/hire-purchase payments or maintenance costs of an older car make us go 'oof'.
Even if we wanted to rent one every other weekend, and the most local car sharing service (Miles) feels expensive per session, it still ends up cheaper in all. So we still never get one of our own.
but it's very different if you already have a car and a lifestyle which assumes easy access and regular use of one.
Not disparaging that at all - it makes more sense to go for an EV then. I hope you find one that isn't constantly calling home. A neighbour is selling their VW E-Up - I do wonder if that is also a spy, or is early enough not to be.
oh yeah. Lots of UK towns are just the wrong size for a decent metro or even reliable bus network, so you're kind of stuck with a car. Even bigger not-london places like Bristol are doable without a car but you still struggle without access to one.
A elderly friend tried to do the right thing a few years ago and bought a old Leaf that had come off of a lease. Unfortunately the usable battery range was less than 40 MI, and the closest dealer for service was 50+ miles away with no charging point between. After a few strandings and several long distance tows, he wound up having to sell it. Due diligence would have saved a bit of a disaster.
@Neil Brown Let me know if you find one. I am looking to buy a non-spying small EV just large enough for two persons and he weekly shopping in about a year from now.
You need a car or an electric quadricycle pretending to be a car? - the latter are much less spy gear because the price point won't pay for all the computers. Stuff like the Ami as far as I know has no spycrap in it, you are expected to bring your own GPS and entertainment 8)
spying aside, I find things like being able to preheat/cool the car to be a huge bonus of having an EV. I have not had to scrape the ice off a car for years. Home Assistant knows our schedule and automatically preconditions the car at the right times. I do wish I could replace the SIM and have the car talk to my own server instead of VW's though, especially since car manufacturers now seem to think it is ok to charge quite high monthly subscriptions to use these facilities!
@Steve Hill 🏴🇪🇺 Well, you can have a standalone auxiliary heating/venting system for Diesel vehicles. I have got one. It doesn't talk to any server, I just pre-program and/or remote control it. (This is not meant to denigrate EV's, I just wanted to chime in on the fact that preheating is not a unique EV feature).
@tobifant presumably only of use when at home though? My car will preheat for things like leaving the pub, driving home from swimming, my wife leaving university in the evening, etc.
ICE vehicles generally use their waste engine heat for heating, so you have to wait until the engine has warmed up before you get any useful heat from them. Conversely, my EV has a 6 kW PTC heater that will get the cabin nice and warm within a couple of minutes and certainly deice the windows in 5.
@Steve Hill 🏴🇪🇺 Well, in the pub scenario, I could hit the remote control like 15 minutes before I leave and the car will be de-iced and warm by then. The auxiliary heating system burns Diesel specifically to generate heat for pre-heating the motor and cabin.
@steve oh I wish Ford supported HA better, but the only integration is a hack on the mobile app and provides full remote unlock access and not sure I'm comfortable with that secret. I mostly use a timer in winter to defrost the car (we've 2 EVs and the Leaf no longer has 3g but timer is great)
A few months ago we bought a low milage 2020 Kia Soul. I haven't activated the Kia app so it isn't spying on me. It could still be logging and reporting its location and performance details but it isn't linked to me. Or not directly. Does it collect data from my phone? Possibly but that's registered with a fake name Gmail address I don't use for anything else. Does Kia collect and link data from their dealer who serviced it? 🤔
@ratcatcher@beige.party I kind of want a first or second generation BMW i3 but the range is just a little too short without a battery upgrade, and then the price point isn't fantastic anymore. Also dreaming of the Slate truck despite its rumored ties to Bezos/Amazon. Amish EV for me.
I have a hybrid, but I also have a driveway and my own charger, I think a key factor for me is being able to charge it on my own tariff rather than pay the much higher amount for a public one. I think it costs me 60p to charge it all the way, well okay its range is 20 miles for that but that ticks off most of my journeys here.
yes, thankfully as I have a 1st Edition ID.3, it is from before VW realised that they could rip everyone off. But newer VW cars are being charged (I think) about £125/year for "connectivity" so that stuff like preheating can work, which is ridiculous. Owners really should have the right to use an alternative provider instead of being locked into one vendor.
I think they have, I should double check. I am also interested by an EV since my current car is a 11yo diesel, but I absolutely do NOT trust the usual brands for privacy.
Out of the blue, a broken 30kWh Nissan LEAF turned up outside my house with battery failure and errors all over the dash. Here's the story of what happened: ...
As I'm sure you know, it's not just electric cars, it's new cars in general. A breakdown of connected car security issues from a few years back: arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/c…
@ross Nissan is about to turn off the app that works with the older Leafs because it can't take all the functions they want their apps to do aka spy on you.
- I have a 2021 Kia Niro which I'm generally happy with, although I've probably done less due diligence on the privacy than I should have done. I can get comfortably get from Cambridge to London and back on a single charge, or Cambridge to Oxford if I charge while I'm there, and I'm very conservative about how close to 0% I'll let it go. For normal driving we change it about once a week, but we could get away with much less.
Kia have recently made the associated app much shittier, but there's no real need for me to use it. Annoyingly, at the same time the Ohme (charger) platform stopped being able to connect to the Kia platform which means my charger can no longer automatically schedule charging to get the battery up to a specific level - I have to manually tell it the starting value each time.
I had a 2018 Hyundai Kona, it and the Kia Niro from that year, and possibly 2019 model too didn't have apps, so no onboard SIM, etc. The original Hyundai Ionic was the same. All of them very decent cars IMO.
I'm lucky in that I have almost no need of a car. My current car is an old diesel, which is not ideal, but it moves very rarely (walk/bike/public transport covers almost everything I want to do) and seems likely to be the last car I own. At my rate of car use, renting one a few times a year would make more sense.
I did consider a cheap small electric car and might end up getting one if my needs change. The Dacia Spring is pretty basic and not very surveillance encumbered, I believe; not luxurious or exciting but maybe worth a look? The VW e-up looks quite nice too, not sure how creepy it is though
@sarajw@front-end.social I had a 2009 model Jazz. Kept it for eleven years, then got a 2021 Jazz Hybrid. The EV charging infrastructure is not great in the extremities of rural NW Wales.
All the things you need to know about electric cars, written down as succinctly as I can (which isn’t very). Note that this is UK/EU specific and excludes and proprietary stuff (e.g.
@sarajw Yes to all this. I ran the numbers a lot when looking at EVs. If you can do it, not having a car is clearly the best thing. Even if you hire a few times a year.
If you don’t need it for work or mobility, you mostly buy a car for sheer convenience.
Our hand was forced when our old car only just got us home from a holiday!
Having an EV makes me feel much better about all my dad-taxi journeys. (Ask me about teaching a neurodiverse kid to cycle if you dare!)
I've had two Leafs (mk.i & ii) Both had an opt-in function when you switched on. Range on the mk. ii is fine (40kWh) mk.i was not so good!
Now I have an eCorsa which does not have an opt-in so I assume it is reporting to base... On the plus side it does not seem to have any features that depend on this.
Yes. I refuse to pay £8/month to enhance the functionality of the buggy app to checks notes turn the pre-heating on, flash the headlights and unlock the doors. (Without the subscription, it logs trip mileage (except when it fails to), and presents you with a battery charge gauge in 'miles' which reflects the state of charge when it last successfully connected over Bluetooth.)
IMHO all three of these could and should be done with buttons on the keyfob. Two of them already are.
I for one cannot wait to read a blog post and/or updated Toot with ye answer
It's a question I would very much like an answer for but with not enough drive to replace my 2019 reg car; 5 years into owning a car from basically new feels far too early, maybe I'll actually do it in another 5, we shall see. Cars be expensive
It's not EVs in particular. Modern cars are all moving toward spying on their 'owners', packaging them, amd selling them to the highest bidder. Or altering the deal, so as you go belting down an Italian mountain road you get a message saying time's up--enter your credit card if you wish to extend your membership to include brakes for another year*
And we have put up with so much shite in the recent past, you could almost say we voted for this.
@etchedpixels @artfulrobot @sborrill The last car I purchased, in 2021, doesn't appear to have any "telematics" or any kind of data uplink. It has GPS and sat radio receivers, but AFAICT, no transmitters other than NFC for the key fob. Since I just ordered a spectrum analyzer, I could maybe try to find any other transmissions it might make, though if they were very brief and infrequent, I might not be able to detect them.
@CjMalone maybe the cut off is a bit more recent than that? Certainly my 2015 Skoda Fabia has no internet connection.Though tracking might still be possible through my phone.
@CjMalone I understand the cut off date for internet connection of new cars in the EU was 1 April 2018 because of the requirement for the ecall directive mandating immobilisation and the summoning emergency services in the event of an accident
@etchedpixels @artfulrobot @sborrill I think if it did have any two-way communication, they'd have tried to sell me optional services that use them, but none were offered.
@RobeeShepherd I think public charging costs track more closely to the price of petrol than the price of electricity, so, if switching to save money it only makes sense if you can charge at home (or work). Edit: even more so if you have home solar, obv.
I own a 2019 Leaf ZE1, which is fine, but... Nissan shuts down the remote server by the end of this month and they're not offering an alternative at all. Quite pissed about it, as I depend on the remote battery SoC to make decisions about charging (when it's cheapest or the panels are generating more then we're using). If you're fine with that, it's a nice car and a good tool for the job. Not amazing, not great, but good enough.
@etchedpixels @artfulrobot @sborrill I've owned two 2006 model year vehicles with OnStar, and physically disconnected the OnStar boxes in both, though it became irrelevant when AMPS cellular went away. People need to be aware that vehicle telematics systems can be used to spy on them even if they aren't paying for service. Also, even without that, the "black box" functionality in cars records a lot about their driving. I'm not sure whether any record GPS data, but it wouldn't surprise me
OVMS3 seems to be the best option, but not cheap. OBD might be a cheaper alternative, but requires a phone running a prorpietary app. I'm running into the issue that all these solutions require one to be comfortable rewiring their car, which is not me. Trying to find a mechanic that might do it for me. Main issue is that the CAN bus does not get power when the car is not turned on, which it usually isn't when I'm charging. Seems like that's weird design, but what do I know.
if you need a car (as we do living in a reasonably populated area with almost no public transport. aka outside London) an electric car makes a lot of sense if you can charge at home. Second hand ev's seem good value at the minute and I think they actually last better than liquid fuel equivalents. Early leafs do have very little range and the early leaf and Zoe are showing signs that the charge port is the weakest link and expensive to replace. Good luck.
I don't have specific recommendations for spy-free EVs, unfortunately, but the Toyota Avalon I had a few years back was one fuse removal away from not having a cell signal, with no other impact of removing that fuse.
The hard part is figuring out which cars are so easy to mod.
Sadly, the IONIQ 5 / EV6 and probably other eGMP cars from Hyundai et al are not so easy to modify as the cell signal is built into the head unit: electronics360.globalspec.com/…
Wendy M. Grossman
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Tobias Ernst mag das.
Michael Kohne
Als Antwort auf Wendy M. Grossman • • •woe2you
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •You wouldn't jailbreak a car.
(You would)
John Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴🧡✊🏻✊🏿
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Advanced Persistent Teapot
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Adam
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •mozillafoundation.org/en/priva…
It’s Official: Cars Are Terrible at Privacy and Security
Mozilla FoundationIngo
Als Antwort auf Adam • • •Stephen Borrill
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Here's the options on my #Skoda #Enyaq. Would Private mode work for you?
Joshua Dunham
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Mark ⛵️🏳️🌈
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •nabeards
Als Antwort auf Mark ⛵️🏳️🌈 • • •@not_a_label just curious what you consider affordable? I've looked into converting my 1988 Suzuki Samurai to electric, looks like it'll be about $12,000. The car cost me $5000 six years ago, so $17,000 for an electric car seems like a good price.
For comparison to something similar here, the BYD S1 Pro starts at $30,000.
Joshua Barretto
Als Antwort auf nabeards • • •nabeards
Als Antwort auf Joshua Barretto • • •@jsbarretto @not_a_label a mechanic here in CR that does these conversions 😁
It’s possible prices are fluctuating rapidly with the state of the world, this was about four months ago.
nabeards
Als Antwort auf nabeards • • •Andy Gates
Als Antwort auf nabeards • • •nabeards
Als Antwort auf Andy Gates • • •Richard Ibbotson
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Tesla love to spy on anyone. BYD. ? Don't know. Their latest does 600 miles on one charge. 250 miles on a 5 minute recharge.
@neil
Root Moose
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •There's the rub...
I've been a "car phreak" since I was old enough to walk. I own like a dozen cars... half of them are even on the road and drivable.
I used to like all cars. Nowadays, I have zero interest in pretty much anything post ~2010 due to the complexity of trying to maintain it and more and more due to the invasive software and policies in cars newer than around that age.
Some makes and models are better than others. Would I buy a new BMW? LOL, are you serious? Would I buy a new MX-5... Maybe.
On the electric car front it seems like Hyundai/Kia have the best "normal" electric options in my market (Canada). Would I buy one... maybe... if I had to... I'm more inclined to find a good value used car regardless of propulsion I think.
I'd really like something electric as a new (to me) car when the time comes. Not sure I can do it given the software.
If I lived in the UK I'd probably be all over the Renault 5 / Alpine A290 twins as a daily struggle car. In my market we are stuck with the punitive auto industry BS from the south. It may change but ... we'll see. I have no idea what those cars are like from software or policy though. Maybe I'd walk out of the showroom.
Root Moose
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •kim
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Matthew Slowe
Als Antwort auf kim • • •kim
Als Antwort auf Matthew Slowe • • •Matthew Slowe
Als Antwort auf kim • • •kim
Als Antwort auf Matthew Slowe • • •They sent me a feedback survey the following week, so I took the opportunity to make snarky comments along the lines of "tell your engineers to look up what a 'watchdog timer' is".
And, to be fair, the dashboard display hasn't frozen like that again. It has briefly gone blank and rebooted while driving along, so maybe somebody got the hint...
Mike 🇬🇧 🇪🇺
Als Antwort auf kim • • •You've obviously never come across a Ford EV then!
kim
Als Antwort auf Mike 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 • • •artfulrobot
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Diane
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •There's apparently a bunch of companies that do EV conversions of older cars in Britain.
insideevs.com/features/735220/…
I've seen videos of EV conversions where the car instrumentation is all analog.
Stephen Borrill
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •MostlyTato
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Some people try to disable stuff but then cars either won't start or it invalidates insurance.
I miss driving and I'd hate to run an old gas gusler, but I'd also hate to have to buy a modern car.
Nick
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •artfulrobot
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Michael Kohne
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Alanna 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •poleguy looking for lost tools
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •My wife got a used 2022 mustang mach e. It was cheaper than my toyota rav4, and a much better value, not including the cost of gas.
As for spying from the govmn't. You can disable a lot of that garbage on this car, set things to not auto update, opt-out, etc.
If you are very concerned you can pull the antenna to prevent any spying/changing of stuff.
Maybe also consider the honda that was out of my budget.
I kept my old accord and am starting an ev conversion.
Molly
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Stevan
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •But all cars are part of surveillance capitalism these days, one suspects.
David Kane
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •poleguy looking for lost tools
Als Antwort auf Michael Kohne • • •🆎
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •poleguy looking for lost tools
Als Antwort auf 🆎 • • •ahnlak
Als Antwort auf 🆎 • • •andybrwn
Als Antwort auf Diane • • •Nick
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Apparently some of the older Nissan Leaf models are losing their connectivity options, which has caused some discontent.
But that may be exactly what you're looking for. Plus it probably reduces their second hand value.
Sara Joy
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •are you in or near any car sharing catchment areas?
Do you have a car already, just not an electric one?
Sara Joy
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •understood! Just trying to work out where you're coming from.
We have no car and do sometimes think about getting a runaround - but every time we seriously run the numbers, summing the insurance and either lease/hire-purchase payments or maintenance costs of an older car make us go 'oof'.
Even if we wanted to rent one every other weekend, and the most local car sharing service (Miles) feels expensive per session, it still ends up cheaper in all. So we still never get one of our own.
Sara Joy
Als Antwort auf Sara Joy • • •but it's very different if you already have a car and a lifestyle which assumes easy access and regular use of one.
Not disparaging that at all - it makes more sense to go for an EV then. I hope you find one that isn't constantly calling home. A neighbour is selling their VW E-Up - I do wonder if that is also a spy, or is early enough not to be.
(Also they remind me of Yorkshire)
Sara Joy
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Peter McDonald
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Tobias Ernst
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • •Neil Brown mag das.
The Penguin of Evil
Als Antwort auf Tobias Ernst • • •Steve Hill 🏴🇪🇺
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Tobias Ernst
Als Antwort auf Steve Hill 🏴🇪🇺 • •Steve Hill 🏴🇪🇺
Als Antwort auf Tobias Ernst • • •@tobifant presumably only of use when at home though? My car will preheat for things like leaving the pub, driving home from swimming, my wife leaving university in the evening, etc.
ICE vehicles generally use their waste engine heat for heating, so you have to wait until the engine has warmed up before you get any useful heat from them. Conversely, my EV has a 6 kW PTC heater that will get the cabin nice and warm within a couple of minutes and certainly deice the windows in 5.
Tobias Ernst
Als Antwort auf Steve Hill 🏴🇪🇺 • •Anton Piatek
Als Antwort auf Steve Hill 🏴🇪🇺 • • •I mostly use a timer in winter to defrost the car (we've 2 EVs and the Leaf no longer has 3g but timer is great)
penguin42
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •The Penguin of Evil
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Phil Thane ✅
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •F4GRX Sébastien
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •The Penguin of Evil
Als Antwort auf Alanna 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ • • •Jack
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •James Tinmouth
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Robee? Na! 🌈
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Steve Hill 🏴🇪🇺
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •F4GRX Sébastien
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Colin H.
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •@pmcdonald Interesting two part video here about a similar-ish situation.
youtube.com/watch?v=GhNM4oNOEb…
Dead battery! Can we resurrect this 30kWh Nissan LEAF? Part 1
Andrew Till / Mr. EV (YouTube)Olivier Mehani
Als Antwort auf poleguy looking for lost tools • • •F4GRX Sébastien
Als Antwort auf James Tinmouth • • •Andy Gates
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Connected cars are a “privacy nightmare,” Mozilla Foundation says
Jonathan M. Gitlin (Ars Technica)Ross Burton
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •rob
Als Antwort auf Ross Burton • • •Chip Butty
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Phil
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •- I have a 2021 Kia Niro which I'm generally happy with, although I've probably done less due diligence on the privacy than I should have done. I can get comfortably get from Cambridge to London and back on a single charge, or Cambridge to Oxford if I charge while I'm there, and I'm very conservative about how close to 0% I'll let it go. For normal driving we change it about once a week, but we could get away with much less.
Kia have recently made the associated app much shittier, but there's no real need for me to use it. Annoyingly, at the same time the Ohme (charger) platform stopped being able to connect to the Kia platform which means my charger can no longer automatically schedule charging to get the battery up to a specific level - I have to manually tell it the starting value each time.
Pseudonymous
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Do you have the engineering skill to retrofit an old car with an electric motor?
You could be the guy fixing up a car in their garage AND the kook tinkering on something in their garage!
Stephen
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Geoff Mackenzie
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •I'm lucky in that I have almost no need of a car. My current car is an old diesel, which is not ideal, but it moves very rarely (walk/bike/public transport covers almost everything I want to do) and seems likely to be the last car I own. At my rate of car use, renting one a few times a year would make more sense.
I did consider a cheap small electric car and might end up getting one if my needs change. The Dacia Spring is pretty basic and not very surveillance encumbered, I believe; not luxurious or exciting but maybe worth a look? The VW e-up looks quite nice too, not sure how creepy it is though
thejikz
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •babble encat
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •I'd really vibe with a stick-shift BEV.
Or a hybrid where I could somehow control the power split myself.
Or an automatic with throttle-by-wire and an ECU which simply didn't spy on me 🙄
Gabriele Svelto
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •*Privacy Not Included | Shop smart and safe | Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla FoundationPaul Martin
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Ross Wintle
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •The thing with the old leaf is they have a different charging socket (Chademo) that’s harder to find chargers for.
I’m really glad we didn’t buy one on that basis alone. We were in a toss up between a long-range Leaf and a Hyundai Ioniq.
We are really happy with the Ioniq.
It’s probably spying on us.
Ross Wintle
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •I made a little terminology cheat sheet if that’s helpful:
rosswintle.uk/2023/06/my-simpl…
My simple EV terminology cheatsheet - Ross Wintle
Ross Wintle (Oikos) (Ross Wintle)AMS
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Ross Wintle
Als Antwort auf Sara Joy • • •@sarajw Yes to all this. I ran the numbers a lot when looking at EVs. If you can do it, not having a car is clearly the best thing. Even if you hire a few times a year.
If you don’t need it for work or mobility, you mostly buy a car for sheer convenience.
Our hand was forced when our old car only just got us home from a holiday!
Having an EV makes me feel much better about all my dad-taxi journeys. (Ask me about teaching a neurodiverse kid to cycle if you dare!)
Slash909uk
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •I've had two Leafs (mk.i & ii) Both had an opt-in function when you switched on. Range on the mk. ii is fine (40kWh) mk.i was not so good!
Now I have an eCorsa which does not have an opt-in so I assume it is reporting to base... On the plus side it does not seem to have any features that depend on this.
HTH
kim
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Yes. I refuse to pay £8/month to enhance the functionality of the buggy app to checks notes turn the pre-heating on, flash the headlights and unlock the doors. (Without the subscription, it logs trip mileage (except when it fails to), and presents you with a battery charge gauge in 'miles' which reflects the state of charge when it last successfully connected over Bluetooth.)
IMHO all three of these could and should be done with buttons on the keyfob. Two of them already are.
Alanna 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Als Antwort auf The Penguin of Evil • • •Dave
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •I for one cannot wait to read a blog post and/or updated Toot with ye answer
It's a question I would very much like an answer for but with not enough drive to replace my 2019 reg car; 5 years into owning a car from basically new feels far too early, maybe I'll actually do it in another 5, we shall see. Cars be expensive
Rob Baxter
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Rupert Reynolds
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •It's not EVs in particular. Modern cars are all moving toward spying on their 'owners', packaging them, amd selling them to the highest bidder. Or altering the deal, so as you go belting down an Italian mountain road you get a message saying time's up--enter your credit card if you wish to extend your membership to include brakes for another year*
And we have put up with so much shite in the recent past, you could almost say we voted for this.
*OK I exaggerated, but not too much.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑
Als Antwort auf The Penguin of Evil • • •The last car I purchased, in 2021, doesn't appear to have any "telematics" or any kind of data uplink. It has GPS and sat radio receivers, but AFAICT, no transmitters other than NFC for the key fob.
Since I just ordered a spectrum analyzer, I could maybe try to find any other transmissions it might make, though if they were very brief and infrequent, I might not be able to detect them.
CJ Malone
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •MarjorieR
Als Antwort auf CJ Malone • • •MarjorieR
Als Antwort auf MarjorieR • • •signs
Als Antwort auf Molly • • •Anton Piatek
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑
Als Antwort auf 🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑 • • •I think if it did have any two-way communication, they'd have tried to sell me optional services that use them, but none were offered.
HumanizeMobility
Als Antwort auf Neil Brown • • •Tom Dewar
Als Antwort auf Robee? Na! 🌈 • • •HumanizeMobility
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Tim Stoop
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •If you're fine with that, it's a nice car and a good tool for the job. Not amazing, not great, but good enough.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑
Als Antwort auf 🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑 • • •I've owned two 2006 model year vehicles with OnStar, and physically disconnected the OnStar boxes in both, though it became irrelevant when AMPS cellular went away.
People need to be aware that vehicle telematics systems can be used to spy on them even if they aren't paying for service.
Also, even without that, the "black box" functionality in cars records a lot about their driving. I'm not sure whether any record GPS data, but it wouldn't surprise me
Tim Stoop
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •I'm running into the issue that all these solutions require one to be comfortable rewiring their car, which is not me. Trying to find a mechanic that might do it for me.
Main issue is that the CAN bus does not get power when the car is not turned on, which it usually isn't when I'm charging. Seems like that's weird design, but what do I know.
Missingtale
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Second hand ev's seem good value at the minute and I think they actually last better than liquid fuel equivalents.
Early leafs do have very little range and the early leaf and Zoe are showing signs that the charge port is the weakest link and expensive to replace. Good luck.
Stephen Mather
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •I don't have specific recommendations for spy-free EVs, unfortunately, but the Toyota Avalon I had a few years back was one fuse removal away from not having a cell signal, with no other impact of removing that fuse.
The hard part is figuring out which cars are so easy to mod.
Sadly, the IONIQ 5 / EV6 and probably other eGMP cars from Hyundai et al are not so easy to modify as the cell signal is built into the head unit:
electronics360.globalspec.com/…